TheScooterScoop

SeattlePI.com Buzzworthy – Scooters in Seattle: “Did you know that Seattle is the No. 6 city in the nation for scooter sales? And rising fuel prices are just encouraging more people to consider a scooter as ‘the new second car,’ the P-I’s Athima Chansanchai reports:

The rising cost of gas — recently soaring to more than $3 a gallon after Hurricane Katrina — has given the green light to scooter buyers already seduced by the retro-cool look, ease of use and being first-on, first-off when it comes to the ferries.

And Seattle has all the elements of scooter nirvana, including clubs that unite two-wheeled addicts of all persuasions, riders said.

It’s a place where six-wheel households (think car plus scooter) aren’t unusual.

Victor Voris, who owns two Vespa stores in the Emerald City, offers this pithy explanation for why scooters are so popular here: ‘Bad traffic, bad parking and high gas prices.’

Sounds about right but there’s a dark side to riding a scooter, too, as reporter Gordy Holt notes in a related story: they can be costly to insure and ‘death on a motorcycle is about 26 times more likely than sitting behind the wheel of a passenger car.’”